


Crossing The Rubicon

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, M/M, Post-The Sign of Three, The Sign of Three Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 05:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John comes back to Baker Street.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossing The Rubicon

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in some haste since I had to post it before the airing of the next episode on Sunday. So I have to thank [Alaena_70](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alaena_70/pseuds/Alaena_70/bookmarks) for the wonderful and speedy beta-ing. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

Rubicon |ˈroōbəˌkän|  
a stream in northeastern Italy that marked the ancient boundary between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. Julius Caesar led his army across it into Italy in 49 bc, breaking the law forbidding a general to lead an army out of his province, and so committing himself to war against the Senate and Pompey. The ensuing civil war resulted in victory for Caesar after three years.  
• [as n. ] a point of no return : on the way to political union we are now crossing the Rubicon.

 

At approximately the moment, very nearly the moment, that Sherlock had predicted John and Mary’s flight to their honeymoon would take off, somehow John appeared in their apartment. Sherlock only blinked twice. If he was some other man, some ordinary man, some man who doubted his own eyes, his senses (because John smelt the same as he always did nowadays, like his cheap deodorant, and his expensive cologne that Mary had given him for their one year anniversary) if he doubted his faculties, Sherlock would have thought he was dreaming or hallucinating. Because clear as the day outside, John Watson was standing before him, when he was to be with his lovely new bride, departing for a short time to warmer climes to consummate his marriage, and to enjoy a vacation before the start of their ordinary life together. That’s what people did, didn’t they? 

“Have you figured it out yet?” John asked him rather calmly. But Sherlock had only deduced that John was mad as hell, his rage concealed beneath the remarkable aura of calm he could project even in the worst of situations, the kind that would make a less extraordinary man tremble at the knees. 

“Did your flight get delayed?” Sherlock said finally, stabbing in the dark. 

“No,” and John checked his watch, “I think it must have taken off about two minutes ago.” 

“Oh,” Sherlock said and turned his gaze to the very bottom of John’s trousers, then to the lint on his elbow, back down to his shoes and finally up to his blue eyes that were too dark, overblown, black as the blackest night in starless London. He was in shock. He’d been to the airport, just an hour ago. He had dragged his suitcase into a taxicab, over pavement, over the grime of Heathrow airport, and then back again, over the filthy floor of Heathrow, over pavement, into a taxicab and finally onto the dust of Baker Street, where it was resting now. Out on the street where anyone could steal it. John was not thinking about his suitcase. He was thinking about Mary. 

“Where’s Mary?” Sherlock asked gently and watched John flinch violently, like a man who had stepped onto a mine and realized it just before it had blown. “What did you do, John?”

John exploded. Sherlock should have seen it coming, he really should have if he was half as good as he always felt justified in boasting he was. 

“What did I do, you fucking sociopath,” Sherlock winced and closed his eyes. 

“Don’t you dare close your eyes. Don’t you dare retreat. I will follow you, I swear to God, even into your mad, mad mind. I will find you, and drag you back into the world you share with the rest of us mere mortals. Did you think I wouldn’t realize it? Did you think I wouldn’t know what you were doing, you utter lunatic. Is that what you think of my intelligence? Is that the esteem you so beautifully expressed at the wedding, that you have for my abilities?” John said without taking a single breath, and with beautiful blue eyes still black as death. 

John had called it the wedding, not my wedding. John had fucked something up very badly. Sherlock’s heart stuttered once, twice and then he made it go back to normal. 

“Of course I hold you in the highest– but that’s not the point. What are you talking about, why are you even here, you should be on a plane, to the Bahamas or wherever, you shouldn’t even be here–” Sherlock stopped. He admitted to himself that he was babbling.

“Mary isn’t pregnant,” John said after a moment, gazing at him as you gaze at the ocean. “She was never pregnant.”

Sherlock gaped. He’d only done that once before in his life, and it had also been because of this man. Not in any of Sherlock’s, he can admit it, precise calculations had this moment come so soon, or in quite this manner. He thought, one day, two if he was lucky, and John Watson would be a happy man, a man in the middle of wedded bliss in the Bahamas or wherever. John would not be thinking clearly, drunk on champagne and love, in a foreign locale where London and Sherlock seemed very distant. There were two possible outcomes of his mistake. One scenario would be if Mary and John had believed Sherlock had made the right deduction. They would think that they had lost the baby. In that case, they would find solace in each other. While it would never occur to John that Sherlock could be have wrong, because of his admirable and breathtaking trust, Mary might have. In that case, they would brush it off as Sherlock being wrong–improbable but not impossible–believe it the mistake it had really been. In either case, Sherlock’s mistake would ultimately prove harmless–Wait a moment.

Sherlock grimaced. How could he have forgotten something so vital, so central to John’s recent experience of Sherlock? John had trusted completely in Sherlock’s abilities. But since Sherlock faked his death, John had ample reason to distrust Sherlock himself. He had counted completely on John’s blind faith, a faith he apparently didn’t possess anymore. For a moment, there was only bleak loss in Sherlock’s head and heart. 

“You’re doing it again,” John said quietly. “You’re leaving me and going off into your weird head. I told you I won’t let you.” And then John surprised him yet again. He punched Sherlock in the face. “Focus.”

Sherlock turned his head slowly to John. He was sitting next to him now, cradling his right fist with his other hand. 

“I’m here. I’m with you,” Sherlock said hoarsely. 

“There we were at the airport. We had checked in our luggage and were at the gate. We had an hour to spare so we got something to eat at this small restaurant. Mary said she had to use the bathroom. She was gone, ten, maybe fifteen minutes and just as I was starting to worry, she came back. There was this expression on her face, sad, a little lost. The first thing she asked me was, has Sherlock ever been wrong?” John had been looking down at his scrapped knuckles all this time but now glanced up to look back at Sherlock. Sherlock kept his face blank with a herculean effort. Maybe he was dreaming. Please, let him be dreaming. 

“I said, no. Never. And we laughed, for a moment. She looked at me, like she does when she’s about to tell a joke, and took out one of those off-the-counter pregnancy tests. I knew what it was instantly and I knew what she was about to say as well. She said, there’s a first time for everything, right? I can’t wait to tell him he was wrong, wrong, so very wrong.” John didn’t look away and neither did Sherlock. 

“I was wrong,” Sherlock admitted. 

“Yes, you were,” John agreed. “Luckily for you, luckily for both of us, dear God, Mary never for a moment believed she had been pregnant and lost the baby. She believed you’d made a mistake. She’d been stress eating, which she does, and that wine really had been awful. We laughed about it, but I couldn’t stop thinking. There was a suspicion in my mind. I couldn’t believe that it had been some benign mistake brought about by boredom, by anything but pure design.” Sherlock laughed, somewhat bitterly.

“You think I did it on purpose?” Sherlock asked–knowing that John did in fact think exactly that. 

“It’s not like this would’ve been the first time you lied to me or anything,” John said fiercely.

“I–have no defense,” Sherlock said. 

“Shut up and listen,” John replied. “So there I was, half an hour from departing on my honeymoon, and tentatively thinking, why would he do that? What would be the purpose of doing that to us? And the only answer was that you’d been acting bizarre. I mean really uncharacteristically. Looking back at the wedding, thinking about your speech, looking at your behavior throughout the day, I didn’t recognize you. It was like a mad world, where suddenly you’re composing sentimental waltzes people can dance to, instead of your usual avant-garde tinkering. Where you’re making people cry with loving, emotional words, instead of your insults. Where you’re telling me you love me.” John stared hard at Sherlock. Damningly, Sherlock looked away. 

“I mean on some level I thought you were acting. Taking care of guests, being polite to my granny, being on your best behavior. That was all unusual. But I thought, it’s a special day.” John sighed and ran a weary hand through his hair. 

“But you don’t believe in special days,” John went on relentless. “You don’t believe in birthdays, anniversaries, holidays or anything. You don’t change your behavior for anything, for anyone. I thought, if he was acting, he did it for me. If he was genuine, it was because me.”

“John,” Sherlock said with, what felt like, a last breath. 

“Then somehow, twenty-five minutes before boarding. It hit me, it finally hit me. The thought I’d been avoiding since yesterday, and maybe for much longer. I thought, he really loves me. It was the look on your face while we were all laughing, like you were about to jump again. And I realized that was another note you’d left me, that whole day, another note.”

“A love letter, perhaps,” John said calmly. “Saying goodbye to a lost love. Very romantic.”

Sherlock jumped to his feet and started pacing. He couldn’t leave, even though he felt like running far away. John would hunt him down. Sherlock had done it after all, he’d done it, he’d destroyed John’s marriage and John’s happiness. After all his efforts to preserve it, against his worst instincts, against his selfish needs, over the last six months. All his vigilance, all his will power exercised every damn day, to make sure he never said a word, never gave even a hint, and he’d ruined it because of his own sentimentality. 

“What did you do, John?” Sherlock asked with his back to his friend. 

“I left Mary at the airport,” John replied, after a moment.

Sherlock turned around, infuriated. “Why did you do that? This is not the kind of man you are! You don’t leave your wife at the airport. You would never do that, not over an unsubstantiated hunch. You would never do that because you’re the bravest, kindest and wisest man I know–I meant that. I expect better from you.” 

John slumped, suddenly aged ten years. “I had to do it,” he said quietly. “It was the only thing I could do when I realized that I couldn’t let you say goodbye to me. Not again. I couldn’t let you leave. Not again. I couldn’t let you martyr yourself, as if you were actually a saint instead of the asshole you really are. I couldn’t do it.”

“You were afraid when you entered the apartment,” Sherlock realized, suddenly remembering. “You thought I’d already left, for somewhere else.”

“Yes,” John confessed.

“I’m still here. I promise not to leave. I’ll be right here whenever you want me. If it’s tomorrow, in a month, or a year. Go ask Mary to forgive you,” Sherlock said. “She’ll forgive you, I promise.”

“No, she won’t,” John said firmly. 

“Why not? You can tell her I scared you. Tell her it was my fault–”

“She said she’d never forgive me if I left her at the airport,” John cut in viciously. “She said if I left, I better not come back.”

“She’ll forgive you,” Sherlock said condescendingly, ignoring his rapid heart beat, his sweaty palms, and the desire to say, stay.

“I made sure she wouldn’t,” John replied, looking dangerous. “I told her you were in love with me, just as we were about to board the plane. Mary said, I thought you knew that. I thought that was why we were being extra nice to Sherlock.”

Sherlock flinched and looked away. He had seen it in Mary’s eyes. The sympathy, the care, and the knowledge that John loved her best. 

“I hadn’t known,” John whispered. “How could I have known that? You actually said that you were basically a brain and the rest was just appendix.”

“I thought it was true,” Sherlock replied, hope jittering in his bloodstream. 

“I told her I was going to you when I left. I made sure she knew that. She said I was the real sociopath, not you,” John said evenly. 

“Why?” Sherlock asked, the question so quiet it was basically an exhaled breath. 

“Because I realized the marriage wouldn’t last. It wouldn’t work. I love her but I love you too. It wasn’t just because you’d been miserable at my wedding and martyring yourself or some bullshit like that. If you left me again, I would go crazy. It would have been intolerable. I realized that Mary wouldn’t ever stop me from seeing you. That knowing what I did, always fearing you would disappear one day without telling anyone, fearing you would slip away while on some crazy chase, into the London gutters, I realized that I would never stay away from you. One day, when Mary and I would be fighting, and you would be yourself, and I would stay over, something would happen. Slowly everything would fall apart. You’re not made to be the other woman. Mary should never be cheated on. Who knows how bad it could get, ” John stated all this with remarkable calm. 

“You thought all this through, in what, ten minutes? Maybe less,” Sherlock asked, fascinated. 

“I think it was seven, in fact,” John replied. 

“Hmmm,” Sherlock replied. “Impressive.”

“I think so,” John replied in the same tone. 

“You fucked up your marriage, your life, your reputation, all in seven minutes,” Sherlock said, panicking quietly, “it might be a record.” 

John hung his head but his eyes were dry. His hands were very steady. He could probably kill a man, perform an emergency medical procedure, with those sturdy hands. Yet, he couldn’t save this disaster of a situation he’d put himself into, and unfortunately for him, Sherlock was rapidly losing all willpower to do so. He only had so much. He had spent it all over the months, piecemeal. He was at the end of the rope. He had known it at the wedding, when he’d slipped so many times, shown his loneliness, his love. He had been mistaken about the pregnancy, later realizing that it was his own deep fear that had made him see those three signs as proofs when they were merely coincidental, yes Mycroft, for once mere coincidence. 

“What should we do with you?” Sherlock mused out loud. “You’re a disaster, and you’re going to drag me under with you. I’ve been doing so well, too. People were constantly noting the positive changes. I was gentler, wacky for sure, but lovable. Like the Mad Hatter, or that attractive pirate who is always drinking rum in those movies you love. Everyone knows those characters are insane, but in a way that’s harmless and good. I’ve always had an edge people were afraid of, something sharp and metallic. Something not good. But these days I’m harmless.”

John looked up with his eyes like a London night, crime hidden away in back alleys. “I’m afraid of you right now,” he said slowly. 

“What do you think I’ll do?” Sherlock asked, intrigued, moving closer.

“I dunno,” John mused. “I’m not sure what you’ll do, but it feels like you could do anything. You could rip out my skin, or my teeth, stab me somewhere tender, and leave.”

“John, John,” Sherlock said feeling slightly dizzy. He knelt on the floor in front of where John was sitting and told his hands to just grip John’s thighs, just lightly touch him on his thighs, near his hip.

“You could do all that and I would still forgive you. I would still not regret a moment of our time together. I would look forward to more, if I somehow made it to another day.” John gasped as Sherlock touched him, finally. Then they were kissing. 

\----

John never asked Mary for forgiveness. She never forgave him. Sherlock went back to being deadly. Like always, John was the one most in danger. John didn’t mind.


End file.
